![]() Inspired by nineties pop and produced by genre-bending musician Clarence Clarity, the critically acclaimed project signaled Sawayama’s major breakthrough. In 2016, Sawayama shared the non-album singles “Where U Are” and “This Time Last Year”, leading into the independent release of her 2017 debut EP RINA. Released on 7” vinyl via indie label Make Mine, the single began to put her on the radar of industry tastemakers, although she would not reemerge for another three years. Forming the hip-hop/R&B outfit Lazy Lion alongside several friends including rapper DSB and Wolf Alice bassist Theo Ellis, she contributed to the group’s eponymous EP in 2010 before making her debut as a solo artist in 2013 with a soul-tinged two-tracker entitled “Sleeping in Waking”. Born in Niigata, Japan on August 16th, 1990 and raised in London from the age of five, singer-songwriter Rina Sawayama initially forayed into music amidst her studies at Cambridge. Hynde walks her talk in a refreshingly outspoken manner.Get Rina Sawayama tickets now to see an amazing performance live by a great entertainer. Her devotion to the Sanskrit principle of ahimsa - non-violence to animals – even appears in a manifesto on the front page of the Pretenders official website and is spelled out here. Rather than brush or flick it off, Hynde, a well-known vegan and animal-rights activist, had her guitar technician gently remove it from her arm and set it free backstage. ![]() At one point during her concert on Friday night, a moth or some other kind of flying insect landed on her sleeve and made a home there. And Hynde’s commitment to living her values extends beyond her music. Today’s young crop of female-empowerment artists owe a huge debt to Hynde as a songwriter, performer, and role model. Songs like “Kid,” “Brass in Pocket,” and “Mystery Achievement” were as urgent and as powerful as when I spun them on my college radio show in in the early 1980s.Ĭhrissie Hynde of Pretenders at MASS MoCA (photo Kaelan Burkett)Ī subverter of stereotypes and fomenter of gender role reversal from day one (made explicit in her cover of the Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing,” which served as a kind of template and manifesto for everything that followed), Hynde was decades ahead of her time. ![]() Rather, Hynde and audience were fully engaged in the here and now. ![]() And with Hynde in as full voice as she was in 1978 - with her soulful tone and her superhuman vibrato still intact - one wasn’t taken back on a magic carpet of mere nostalgia. While only Martin Chambers, the phenomenal drummer, remains with Hynde from that original lineup, the current formation of the Pretenders – featuring Nick Wilkinson on bass guitar, James Walbourne on lead guitar, and the multitalented Carwyn Ellis on keyboards, guitar, and percussion – did not miss a step in serving up the band’s patented sounds. On Friday night, in a courtyard concert at MASS MoCA on a perfect midsummer’s eve, Chrissie Hynde, now 67, made clear that she still rules as one of the most enduring, towering figures of rock ‘n’ roll. ![]() The eponymous debut album, The Pretenders, with its punk-infused energy and its melodic, New Wave update of British Invasion rock, to this day holds its permanent position at the top of anyone’s list of all-time best debuts. – Forty-one years ago, after several false starts, Akron, Ohio-native Chrissie Hynde - having long since moved to London - finally succeeded in forming a band that could realize onstage and in the recording studio the sounds she until then heard only in her head. Chrissie Hynde of Pretenders at MASS MoCA (photo Nooshig Vargabedian) ![]()
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